Blooms of the toxic dinoflagellate, Karenia brevis, are a frequent occurrence off the coast of Florida. Harmful algal blooms pose a threat and efforts to reduce or eliminate their negative impacts and consequences are necessary. In the Gulf of Mexico, toxic blooms of K. brevis regularly lead to untimely restrictions on commercial and recreational shellfish harvesting and deleterious effects on tourism and public health. Toxic blooms of K. brevis are generally detected by visual confirmation (e.g., water discoloration and fish kills), illness to shellfish consumers, or human respiratory irritation with actual toxicity verified through time-consuming chemical analyses for brevetoxins within shellfish samples and mouse bioassays. Currently, biological monitoring programs primarily rely on microscope-based cell enumeration and gross measurements of a biochemical parameter, such as chlorophyll-a concentration. Existing methods can be slow, labor intensive, intermittent, and do not always provide timely or accurate measurements. Existing methods also do not provide estimates of toxin in water, only of organisms that produce biotoxins. The portable apparatuses of the present invention provide for quantitation of biotoxins in aqueous environments.
Measuring chemical moieties, such as organic compounds, in aquatic environments is necessary for environmental monitoring, identifying usage patterns of pollutants, and determining levels, transport and fate of the organic compounds and potential pollutants in aquatic environments. The most widely accepted technique for carrying out this monitoring is a combination of spot sampling followed by laboratory-based extraction and determination of chemical moieties of interest. This technique, however, yields only discrete time measurements of chemical contaminants. Increasing sampling frequency may improve this limitation and provide a more accurate picture of time-integrated pollutant levels, although it can be cost prohibitive. The present invention provides an economical and effective means to assess chemical moieties over time and space via mounting an automated chemical analysis apparatus onto autonomous underwater vehicles. Remotely operative vehicles (ROVs) and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) offer a means for analyzing water components in situ in harsh underwater environments.